PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



673 



Finding so nearly an invariable current of prece- 

 dent and authority, your committee next turned to 

 see in how far the rule drawn from precedent accords 

 with the (lain and immutable principles of law and 

 justice, and also in how far tuis rule seems to be 

 , necessary to shield the officer from what might hap- 

 pen again, as it has happened before, parliamentary 

 oppression under the pressure of nigh party and 

 other excitement, as well as to protect the rights of 

 the constituency as to an elective office from being 

 deprived of the services of their officer by his re- 

 moval by impeachment, because of alleged crimes or 

 misdemeanors committed by snch officer before the 

 people had chosen him to serve them, and which the 

 electors well might have held not to have been a dis- 

 qualification of the officer, if such charges had been 

 made against him before the election. 



Your committee, therefore, are led to inquire what 

 is the nature, and what the objects, of impeachment 

 under the Constitution ? 



Are they punitive or remedial ? Or, in other words, 

 is impeachment a constitutional remedy for remov- 

 ing obnoxious persons from office, ana preventing 

 their again filling office, or*a power given tor punish- 

 ing an officer while he is an officer for some crime 

 alleged to have been committed by him before he 

 was such officer ? Your committee are very strongly 

 inclined to the opinion that impeachment was in- 

 tended by the framers of the Constitution to be 

 wholly remedial, and not punitive except as an inci- 

 dent to the judgment, because we find that the Con- 

 stitution limits the judgment in impeachment by 

 strongly restrictive words : 



Judgment in cases of Impeachment shall not extend 

 farther than to remove from office, and disqualification 

 to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit un- 

 der the United States. 



If snch judgment is a punishment for an alleged 

 high crime and misdemeanor, then why does the 

 same article provide for the punishment of the aa- 

 cused a second time for the same offense? Because 

 the words we have quoted are followed by the pro- 

 vision 



But the party convicted shall, nevertheless, be subject 

 to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment accord- 

 Ing to law. 



This, therefore, would leave the party who had 

 been removed from office and disqualified from hold- 

 ing office by the judgment of impeachment, if that 

 is a punishment tor his crime, to be the second time 

 punished for the same offense, which is contrary to 

 natural justice against Magna Charta, and is most 

 positively forbidden by the fifth article of amend- 

 ment to the Constitution. 



This article also throws some further light on this 

 subject, because in its nervous language it enacts 

 that 



No person shall be held to answer for a capital or other 

 Infamous crime, unless upon presentment or Indictment 

 of a grand-jury, except in cases arising In the land or 

 naval forces, or in the militia when In actual service in 

 time of war or public danger. 



Nor does it appear that this view is affected by 

 the exception in section two, article three, of the Con- 

 stitution, that the trial of all crimes except in cases 

 of impeachment shall be by jury ; this exception 

 BKe 



I 



being necessary only to make the instrument con- 

 sistent in all its parts with itself, as it had already 

 provided that the impeached could be tried by jury 

 for his crime. 



Again, we find impeachment to be remedial in 

 this, that It only provides as a further consequence 

 disqualification for office, by which the evil is cured 

 that thereafter the Government may not have an 

 officer who has so fur forgotten his obligations to 

 his official oath and to his duty as a citizen as to hove 

 been removed from office for high crimes and mis- 

 demeanors again by vote of the electors or appoint- 

 ment of the Executive put in place of honor nr trust. 



W are also inclined to believe that proceedings of 



VOL. XIII. 43 A 



impeachment were intended to be remedial and not 

 punitive, because we have already seen that if puni- 

 tive at all an entirely inadequate punishment has 

 been provided by the judgment ; because the very 

 highest offenses are triable by impeachment, such 

 as treason and bribery, and the sentence may be only 

 removal of an officer whose term extends for a few 

 days only, as in the case under consideration. 



Again, we are brought to the conclusion that pro- 

 ceedings of impeachment are remedial and not puni- 

 tive, because in the case of Judge Pickering, before 

 referred to, impeached for habitual intoxication, the 

 officer was condemned because he became incapaci- 

 tated for the performance of the duties of his office, 

 and we find that impeachment is the only means 

 known to our Constitution by which a civil officer 

 of the United States elected by the people or a judge 

 appointed by the Executive may be removed from 

 office. And certainly habitual intoxication, while it 

 may not be a crime at common law or by statute in 

 a private person, may readily enough seem to be a 

 very high crime and misdeanor in a high civil officer, 

 wholly incapacitating him from performing all hi 

 duties, so much so as to be made by the articles of 

 war aground for removing an officer from the mili- 

 tary service. 



Again, your committee are inclined to believe that 

 impeachment is not punitive, because, although an of- 

 ficer may have been tried and convicted of a high 

 crime, yet he may be impeached for that very crime 

 as a remedy for public mischief, and thus, in the con- 

 verse of the proposition above stated, be twice pun- 

 ished for the same offense. 



If the conclusions to which your committee have 

 arrived in this regard are correct, it will readily be 

 seen that the remedial proceeding of impeachment 

 should only be implied to high crimes and misde- 

 meanors committed while in offlcCj and which alone 

 affect the officer in discharge of his duties as such, 

 whatever may have been their effect upon him as a 

 man, for impeachment touches the office only, and 

 qualifications for the office, and not the man himself. 



It will be seen from a few illustrations that it 

 hardly could have been the intendment of the Con- 

 stitution that an officer could be impeached for a 

 crime committed by him before his entry into- the 

 office from which he is to be removed, because, if 

 this were so, there is no constitutional, and thus far 

 no legal limitation as to the time during which he 

 may be held so amenable to such impeachment. 



One may have committed a high misdemeanor in 

 his early youth, repented it, outlived it, or may have 

 been pardoned, and, in the language of the law, 

 " made as white as snow," audyet, without limita- 

 tion, years afterward may be impeached for (hat 

 crime and deprived of an office by him afterward 

 held which he has filled to the entire satisfaction of 

 all good men. Indeed, impeachment may in this 

 way be used as a means of removing from the possi- 

 bility of election a popular candidate whom the peo- 

 ple desire to elect to the highest office within their 

 gift if an opposed House of Representatives chose 

 to impeach for a high misdemeatiorof many years, 

 standing and present that to the Senate, who, upon 

 finding the fact, are bound to give judgment, or if 

 not hound, might be willing to give judgment of dis- 

 qualification from office forever, from the effect of 

 which judgment no power under the Constitution 

 could relieve, for cases of impeachment are- expressly 

 excepted, and no law could avail, nor even the unan- 

 imous election of the whole people could give abso- 

 lution. 



Your committee are not unmindful that the re- 

 port of the learned committee of the House, made 

 upon the testimony which has been referred to our 

 consideration have, in the course of its reasonings, 

 likened the cause for which a member may be ex- 

 pelled to the cause for which an impeachment would 

 lie, and argue that "the close analogy between this 

 power and the power of impeachment is deserving 

 of consideration upon the question whether the 



